“He was. That much is without question. The church announced that. And yet, Priest Yan was seen in the university of Bohevia. The church has proclaimed him a fraud. Well, that much is only natural. Despite that, the university has publicly confirmed he is the same man, and the country as a whole is maintaining their silence.”
Yngvi couldn’t take in the deluge of information and pressed on his temples with his right hand’s thumb and middle finger before holding out his left hand to stop his father.
“Hold on a moment, father. The church announced that he was a fraud, and the university announced the opposite. In that order? There wasn’t a breakdown of communication and the university made their announcement without knowing the church’s position?” he asked, face twisted.
It was a natural question to ask. There was a huge difference between announcing the priest was the real Yan before the church said otherwise and doing so afterwards. While the former meant there was a chance they simply didn’t know the church’s position first, the latter was practically open revolt against the church.
And yet, the king shook his head. “There is no doubt. To be specific, the church announced his execution, then approximately two months later, someone calling themselves Priest Yan appeared at the university. Once those rumors became public, the church immediately declared them a fraud. Once the university received the official statement, they put out a contradictory one.”
“Wow...”
His voice cracked as he spoke, but there was a hint of a smile on his face.
It was practically explosive information, but considering it carefully, it was also information that could lead to chaos within the church’s sphere of influence on the Northern Continent. While Uppasala was on the same continent, it kept its distance from the church, so even if it wasn’t exactly good news for them, it was certainly easy to consider an internal scuffle in the church no real concern for them either.
When he realized that, Yngvi regained some of his calm.
“It’s become a pretty big thing. The university’s essentially breaking ties completely. Wait. You said that Bohevia itself was keeping their silence, right? Isn’t that a tacit agreement that the priest is the real Priest Yan?”
With the state university coming out against an official pronouncement from the church, the country maintaining its silence rather than censuring the university was indeed tacit approval.
The king nodded at his question. “Essentially, yes. The clergy of Bohevia have long been rather accepting of the man’s ideas and were rather divorced from the core of the church. Bohevia itself holds the man in high esteem as well. While the country as a whole isn’t defying the church, the general sentiment rests with him.”
More accurately, there were many within the leadership of the country that accepted Yan’s teachings that were critical of the church. They may have even been in the majority.
“I see. So if the university still maintains the man is telling the truth, and the country isn’t contradicting them, there is a decent chance that it really is him.”
Yngvi’s statement was straight to the point. Yan had been the dean of a university department until very recently, so many there would know him personally and be friendly with him on an individual basis. The university was a state-sponsored endeavor, so there would be leaders of the country who knew him as well. Agreeing that it was him meant that there was a high possibility that it actually was.
“Indeed. If he was a fraud, their leaders would decry him as such,” the king agreed.
Yngvi nodded and considered it further. “Hm...so if this Priest Yan is the real one, that means that the one who was executed was a fake. Did the church not realize? No...that doesn’t make sense,” Yngvi said, refuting his own hypothesis.
However antagonistic the relationship between them, Yan was an official priest, so it was hard to imagine that not one of the people in the church knew his appearance.
“That would mean that the church knew the man they captured wasn’t him. That makes their actions seem utterly clumsy, though. Wait, maybe not? The priest they captured was Priest Yan. Despite that, the Priest Yan at the university is also the real one. That itself is possible, and it would mean that the falsehood was his execution. After his capture, he must have escaped somehow, or negotiated for his survival. They’d allow that maybe if he agreed to not take center stage and instead live out the rest of his life as another person. Then the priest could have broken that agreement. That at least all holds together.”
The rapid burst of hypotheticals was perhaps the greatest proof of Yngvi’s intellect. However, his intelligence could only lead him to conclusions that matched his knowledge. In this case, where the unnatural phenomenon of resurrection was part of it, his thinking was essentially all wasted effort.
Therefore, the king couldn’t resist an unconscious smile as he gave his son the next piece of information. “Incidentally, the self-proclaimed Priest Yan had issued a complaint to the church for executing him without just cause.”
There was a long pause where Yngvi was dumbstruck. The longest silence of the meeting so far.
“What?”
It was no surprise—what his father had said was just that absurd. Despite his flustered question, Yngvi still hadn’t truly understood what his father had said.
“Um, so he’s protesting how, despite escaping in the nick of time, the church paraded a fake corpse around?”
Yngvi was practically praying for that to be the case. That at least made sense to him. And yet, his wishes were betrayed.
“No. He admits that he was executed. His claims are that the church executed him without cause and were so self-righteous as they took someone’s life. He claims that they are perverting the faith’s teachings and demands they rectify it.”
“That’s the first time...I’ve heard someone claim they were executed,” Yngvi managed, pressing a hand to his head to attempt to stave off a headache.
His father nodded briefly. “Indeed. Normally an executed man remains silent for eternity.”
“Dead men tell no tales” was a general rule that no one expected to be overturned, even in a world of magic. Despite his utter shock, Yngvi churned over the information in his head rapidly and understood how the priest was acting.